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The Pardee RAND Graduate School (PRGS.edu) is the largest public policy Ph.D. program in the nation and the only program based at an independent public policy research organization—the RAND Corporation.

RAND Health Care

The most trusted source of objective health care policy research

RAND Health Care

The most trusted source of objective health care policy research

RAND Health Care promotes healthier societies by improving health care systems in the United States and other countries. We provide health care decisionmakers, practitioners, and consumers with actionable, rigorous, objective evidence to support their most complex decisions. About us »

The WeRise/WhyWeRise campaign targeted young people to encourage them to engage with mental health issues and create a movement to lower barriers to mental health access. People exposed to the campaign reported more-supportive attitudes toward people with mental illness and greater mobilization toward action around mental health issues.

Almost a third of U.S. veterans live 40 miles or more from the nearest VA medical center, so the VA is trying to make it easier for them to use private providers closer to home. But it will take significant efforts to better prepare civilian doctors to deliver high-quality care to veterans.

Improving staff engagement leads to a variety of positive benefits. But defining and measuring engagement is not straightforward, and different demographic factors are associated with different levels of engagement. The National Health Service in England is looking at ways to increase engagement in its staff.

A rapidly aging U.S. population with complex care needs will likely accelerate emphasis on palliative care services. A review of palliative care research found substantial evidence to support clinical practice guidelines and was incorporated into the new edition of the guidelines.

Physician practice engagement with alternative payment models (APMs) would be enhanced by simpler APMs, a slower pace of change, greater support for new capabilities and timely data, and reexamination of practice response to APMs with financial risk.

Medicare for All is a talking point for both major U.S. political parties. Would it be free? Would people have to switch doctors? Would waits be long? Misconceptions abound about single-payer proposals and their likely effects. Here are the facts.

What We Focus on

We address the topics that matter most in the health care policy debate.

Opioid Policy

Opioid overdoses claimed nearly 70,000 lives in 2017. Unless something is done to deflect this toxic trajectory, the death toll could exceed 500,000 over the next decade. How can we successfully confront this public health menace?

Paying for Care

Over the last four decades, both the public and private sectors have experimented with payment approaches designed to motivate providers to deliver better care at lower cost. Since the RAND Health Insurance Experiment, we have led the way in efforts to understand the links between physician payment, quality of care, and system cost.

U.S. Health Care Policy

The U.S. health care policy landscape is poised for great change. Extensive RAND research offers insights about the likely impact of repealing or revising the ACA along key dimensions, including Medicaid, the individual mandate, effects on employers, tax subsidies, changing rating regulations, and essential health benefits.

Organizing Care

How individuals access and experience care depends on more than health insurance. At the most basic level are questions about who provides care and how new care arrangements can make care more accessible, more efficient, and less costly. RAND Health Care is evaluating multiple experiments with these new arrangements to learn how well they perform and what might improve them.

Quality of Care

The U.S. health care system struggles to deliver care that is likely to improve health and is consistent with current medical science. Improving care is a long-term, complex challenge, and we have confronted this challenge by helping to establish the scientific basis for defining and measuring quality of care.

Mental Health

Mental health can affect a person's health and well-being in profound ways. RAND Health Care studies prevention and treatment approaches for mental health disorders, as well as a broad range of topics related to mental health and illness.

Senior Behavioral Scientist

I think debt [from medical school tuition] is a little bit overplayed. It's a polite way of talking about differences in income and about money but it's really quite a small financial factor relative to lifetime earnings differences.

Senior Physician Policy Researcher

If the opioid crisis is to be solved, the way policymakers think about it needs to evolve from considering each aspect of it in isolation to viewing the crisis as an ecosystem, where policies targeting only one dimension too often ripple throughout the system, with unintended consequences.

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